Stephen Muse, FAIA, liked this historic house from the get-go. “It had to do with the simplicity of the floor plan, compared to the way houses are built today, when things are so convoluted and you have to walk through galleries to get places,” he says. “It’s something all of us should think about more.”

After clearing away the bad additions on the eastern end of the plantation house, Muse created a hyphen that connects to a one-story structure containing a new kitchen. Its attached breakfast room, which faces the water, is designed as an enclosed porch and echoes the twin Georgian entry porches, which Muse replicated on the waterfront side. A judge called it “a very sensitive restoration of this kind of housing. It could have gone off-track in a lot of ways, but it didn’t.”